


The Haunting of Fjord

by Wiccy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Look At Your Life Look At Your Choices, You can't betray a betrayer god, do not copy to other sites, jump scare, sea ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 16:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20549048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiccy/pseuds/Wiccy
Summary: All that Fjord has left is himself and everything has lead him to this moment. It's time to face his worst fears.





	The Haunting of Fjord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infernal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/gifts).

He pushed the hood of the small green caplet down to gather between his shoulder blades. He’d always expected that he’d have to do this. He’d just never expected that he’d have to do it alone. The worst part was that after all of it, he still didn’t know who he really was. This confrontation sure would have been a lot easier with his friends at his back. He might have stood a chance then. It was his arrogance that made him think he could hold his patron back, delay it, put it off, without real consequences. His hubris had led him here. 

Here, to this unknown ocean in the Underdark. A really vast, creepy as all hell ocean, full of nightmares and the ghosts of his worst memories. Here, alone. Everything he had touched he’d corrupted. One by one the Mighty Nein had fallen around him, his intentions and his ambitions. A flash of light in his periphery interrupted his thoughts and made him turn in time to see the yellow-orange ghost of Caleb, a familiar orb clutched tightly in his hand, as he unleashed his infamous fireball directly into the chest of his best friend. The ghost of Nott opened her mouth in a silent scream of pain and horror – a scream the Fjord could still hear nonetheless – as she burned to cinder and ash. He watched the moment that ghost Caleb had realized what he’d done and fallen to his knees, one hand clenched around a handful of remains, the orb now rolling free from his grasp. The flames that claimed the wizard’s own life licking lovingly at the orb before the scene flickered out of existence and began again from the beginning. One of Fjord's many failures playing out in an infinite loop of disaster and despair.

Fjord looked away, unable to relive it all again, only to be accosted by another death and another and another, no matter which way he looked he was forced to watch his friends die again and again. Molly, impaled upon a glaive he should have been there to stop. Yasha when she fell to the Laughing Hand. Caduceus and Beau ripped apart by the ocean itself even as they tried to save him. Then there was Jester, sweet, innocent, lovely Jester. This ghost was the hardest to face. She was in his arms, her face streaked with tears and blood as her hands grasped weakly at his chest and her mouth moved to form a single, questioning word; _"why"_, as his blade lay slipped between her ribs and stained with her blood, his own eyes cold and empty. It was the last death, the death that had finally forced him here. Forced him to face his master and all that they had wrought together.

There were other ghosts too. Ghosts more interactive than those terrible memories. Ghosts who accused and tortured and laughed. All of his friends, some of his enemies, Avantika and Vandran. They all had things to say. Names to call him. Justice of words to lay upon his head. The torment seemed to last for hours before his little boat finally ran aground on a tiny island that was little more than a mound of dirt and seemed just large enough for a single person to stand on. It was all surrounded by darkness. The Flickering, lingering ghosts the only light occasionally blurring the edges of the deep, inky blackness.

He thumbed the cap off of the flask he drew from his side and took a long, sloppy swig of it’s contents before replacing it into it’s holster and stepping out of the small vessel. His voice, as it called into the darkness, was lazy cadence tinged with unnecessary curse words and a thick Zemnian accent.

“Alright you multi-eyed piece of shit. I’m here, but I’ve not come to free you. In fact, I destroyed the last key. You’re never getting out. So, I suppose you might as well finish me off and let’s be done with all this bullshit.”

**FOOLISH**

The darkness rang around him with the voice of The Great Leviathan, it’s anger palpable in the air. Beneath him the ground gave way, but he didn’t fall. The dirt and rocks instead had changed shapes and colors, had started moving, it became a writhing pile of disembodied hands and the ocean was quickly encroaching on the space the land had once been. Beside him the refuge of his boat exploded into useless splinters and dust as more hands burst through and around it. There was nowhere left to run.

The hands grasped him, pulled him, tore him down. Down. Down. Into the abyss. Into his watery grave so long in coming. An ocean of hellfire and damnation. The flaming waves lapped at his skin as the hands lashed him to the mast of his failures. Higher and higher they grew until he was fully submerged. His lungs burning, drowning. Pain and regret the only things he could feel. Before him, in the blackness of this sea the great yellow-orange, all encompassing eye of Uk'otoa snapped into place; enormous, open wide, terrifying. From inside it's depths came eight figures. They were twisted and distorted, but he knew them, his friends, the chosen. They all blamed him. As they came for him, their claws and gnashing teeth seeking retribution. Inflicting unspeakable pain. The voice of Uk’otoa rang out, sharp and loud and pushing through the terrible sounds of his own rending flesh.

**PUNISH**

**FOREVER**

Fjord awoke with a gasping start, his skin drenched in the heat and salt of sweat rather than that of the hellish ocean. Blinking his eyes into focus, he sat up and took in the scene around him by the dim firelight. Caleb and Nott curled protectively around each other – neither of them so much as singed – Nott’s arm trailing outward so that her hand could curl around the fingers of Jester’s larger one. Fjord let out a breath that he hadn’t known he was holding. Jester lay a short distance away, her head cradled in Beau’s lap, who herself was propped up against a tree, one hand on Jester’s shoulder and the other wrapped, sleep loosened, around her staff. Off in the distance he could make out the form of Yasha, keeping watch from afar.

He turned his head to find Caduceus watching him, his hooded eyes soft and wise and his gentle half smile far too knowing. 

“Hey there,” the cleric intoned with his deep, melodic voice.

“H-hey Caduceus.” Fjord fidgeted a moment, “How long you been awake?” 

“A while.” 

“Oh… okay then.”

Caduceus produced a steaming cup of tea, seemingly from nowhere, and passed it to Fjord. Fjord took the offered drink and sipped at it quietly, all the while aware of the eyes on him as Caduceus watched him wordlessly. Thunder clapped loudly several miles away, but Fjord jumped anyway, causing the cup and saucer in his hands to clatter together.

“Rough night.” he said guiltily, setting them down beside him.

“Yeah,” Clay responded, looking into the fire and sipping at his own tea, “Wanna talk about it?”

“No...” Fjord’s knee-jerk response came forth before he’d even realized his mouth was open, “yeah, yeah I think maybe I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope that this is a bit of the kind of scary that you were hoping for and I hope you can forgive that it was all just one of his terrible dreams.


End file.
